Leaders of the Arkansas Wagon Train

Leaders of the Arkansas Wagon Train. . Accounts of the Arkansas wagon train list two leaders: John T. Baker (1805-1857) and Alexander Fracher (1812-1857). , John T. Baker was a farmer and cattleman, described as a shrewd trader, a warm friend, and a bitter enemy. He and his family lived along Crooked Creek, near the southern border of present-day Harrison, Arkansas., In 1857, Baker led a group of relatives, acquaintances, and others in a wagon caravan headed to California, where he and his son, John H. Baker had previously spent some time. He took 138 head of "fine stock cattle," nine yoke of oxen, two mules, one mare, one large ox wagon, guns, saddles, bridles, camp equipment, and provisions for himself and five workhands. Three of his adult children went with him. His wife, Mary, and the other children remained in Arkansas, planning to go west later., Before Baker left Arkansas, he wrote his will. He acknowledged that he knew "the uncertainty of life and the certainty of death" but not the time of his "dissolution." He said, "First, I will at my death my body a decent burial in the bosom of its mother Earth and my spirit to the God who gave it.", Alexander Fancher was a farmer and cattleman and a veteran of the Black Hawk War in Illinois. In the 1840s he and his wife, Eliza, moved with their children to Carroll County, Arkansas, and so did his brother John and his family. In 1850 the two brothers and their families moved to southern California. Soon after that, Alexander and his family returned to Arkansas. He obtained a land patent on Piney Creek in Carroll County in 1854 and settled in southern Benton County, where he acquired more land and became a justice of the peace. , Tradition suggests that Alexander, like John T. Baker, recruited family members, neighbors, and perhaps others to go to California in 1857. He and Eliza and their nine children set out on the adventure together. They took six yoke of oxen, eight mules, three horses, four wagons, and as many as 200 head of cattle. , All these emigrants crossed the plains and went through the Rocky Mountains. They journeyed together from the Salt Lake City area, southward through Utah Territory., In September 1857, the massacre at Mountain Meadows cut their journey tragically short and denied John T. Baker's request for a decent burial. Baker was brutally murdered, along with his three children who were with him, one grandchild, a son-in-law, and a daughter-in-law. Alexander and Eliza Fancher were also murdered, as were seven of their children. Three Baker grandchildren and two Fancher children survived. Two years later, they and twelve other surviving children were returned to the care of relatives in Arkansas.